


I Can Change the World for Us

by Littlest_nightmare



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, HP: EWE, Limited Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 08:02:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9063409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlest_nightmare/pseuds/Littlest_nightmare
Summary: He doesn’t call her mudblood almost all year, but the one time he does, she feels his nose break when it meets her fist. She doesn’t know it then, but that’s the moment that breaks him, and remaking himself will be the hardest thing he will ever do. --One shot, the story of two broken souls finding love





	

She notices him, her first year of school, when they sit near each other in potions class. She notices that he knows all the answers, just like she does, and that he copies notes carefully while his friends mess around. She thinks that maybe he is like her. Maybe, just maybe, there is a boy who works hard, who will challenge her intellect. 

She hears him second year, when he insults her, calls her names, and makes her cry. She hears the way he talks to her, talks about her, as if she’s worthless and doesn't mean anything to him. She flinches every time. Mudblood, the word is a brand to her, labeling her as something lesser, something worthless, something that doesn’t belong.

She feels him break during their third year. When he can’t keep his eyes off her in class, when his insults get louder, but hurt less. He doesn’t call her mudblood almost all year, but the one time he does, she feels his nose break when it meets her fist. She doesn’t know it then, but that’s the moment that breaks him, and remaking himself will be the hardest thing he will ever do. 

She first knows him fourth year, when he tracks her down and tells her he’s sorry for what he said, and offers her his hand. He tells her how impressed by her he is, and asks her more questions about the muggle world then she thought possible. She wonders why he even cares, it’s not like he’ll ever venture beyond the Leaky Cauldron anyway. When she asks why, he rubs his cheek and says he’s not sure he agrees with his father anymore. After christmas break, she notices a faint bruise in the spot he always rubs. 

During fifth year, she likes him. He is her friend, in a way that is different from the others she has. He knows what it’s really like to feel awkward around others, to seem like an outsider looking in. He tells her about how hard the past year has been for him, about how he feels like an outsider in his own home. She sits and listen to him talk, hears him, she thinks she may be the first to ever do that. She helps him study for OWLs and he passes her what little information he can get. He risks his life at every meeting, and for that she has no thank you great enough. There could never be one. 

In the sixth year, she fears for him. She knows, even though he won’t admit it, can hardly look her in the eyes, can barely talk to her, what has happened. She doesn’t condemn him for it, she has long since learned to read him, to know which are his thoughts and which are his father's, to see the things he tries to hide from the world, from her. She sees the hurt from afar through the whole year. Her helplessness makes her squirm, but for once she doesn’t act on it. She doesn’t abhore him after that night. She cries alone, in her room, for the friend she has lost, and will possibly never regain, her tears falling like diamonds, filled with the memory of him. 

She only sees him once during seventh year, and when she does, she fears him. She hasn’t seen him since he fled, since that night. She never got to tell him she knew all along and that she doesn’t blame him. But while his aunt cuts into her, she can’t help but be scared of him, his father, his mother, everyone in that room. She sees his eyes darken, sees a pain there, (and she knows it’s real, because it’s the pain she felt all last year, watching her friend fall apart and fall away). She screams and she sees him flinch, sees his wand twitch, feels herself numb a little, she wishes he could do more, but knows he can’t. But she still shakes as she falls to the ground. 

Some of the tears that fall are for the person she cared for. 

After the war, during their seventh year, their eighth year really, they’re broken. They spend sleepless nights together in the library, the room of requirement, and the kitchens. The one time she suggests the astronomy tower, he nearly cries. She never pushes the idea again. It’s nice to sit with him, and even though people look, no one comments. They do their best to hide it anyway, meeting at night on their own. After all, they’ve both had enough of people watching them and talking about them for a lifetime. They mend each other, there in those nights. Somehow, watching him cry, seeing someone just as broken, he mends her and she him. 

After Hogwarts, they love each other. He asks her after graduation if she would meet up with him every now and then. She tells him that she’ll meet him once a week at the Leaky Cauldron for lunch. It becomes their tradition. When the press get word of it, they swarm, but two broken and powerful wizards can be forceful when pushed, so the press back off. Harry laughs when Hermione tells him, Ron only scowls. 

One day Hermione waits alone for him, but he doesn’t come. She can’t help but feel upset, a little betrayed, and maybe something else, something she decides to bury and not address. She gets a memo when she gets back to the office about an explosion (a literal one the letter assures her) at the office and he’ll make it up to her soon. She doesn’t realize that making it up to her means he shows up the next night at her door with a bag of groceries and proceeds to cook her the best dinner she has ever had. 

She didn’t know he could shop in muggle London, or cook without an elf, or cook without magic. She also didn’t know the wine his family grows on their French vineyard was so good. Or that Malfoy tasted just as perfect when her lips met his. She didn’t know he was the sort of man to push her away and tell her he’d never touch her after she’d had a drink. She learns a lot of things that night. She worries that kissing him has ruined something, that he won’t be coming back to her. 

But he comes back the next night, without wine, and makes dinner. They eat and they talk, and this time she doesn’t kiss him. She doesn’t the third, fourth, or fifth time either, but the sixth she can’t stop herself, and she no longer needs the courage of a Malfoy Merlot. 

This time, he doesn’t have a reason to tell her to stop. This time he kisses her back as if his life is depending on it. She knows for her this kiss is everything; years of their life, of fights and insults and late nights in the kitchen with the elves have all lead here. So she kisses as if her life depends on it, because, in some way, it does. 

They wait a year before going out in public together. Even then they stick to the streets of muggle London, which Hermione made her refuge after the war. The nights are spent sitting through shows, laughing in pubs, or dancing the nights away under the trees. On one particularly momentous occasion, they break into the palace. As Malfoy pointed out, they were war heroes, geniuses, and wizards to boot. It wasn’t the worst thing they’d ever done. 

“Granger,” He whispers in her ear as she hesitates, “You broke into Gringotts which hides more valuable treasure and is a great deal better protected.” He holds out his hand and smiles, Hermione has to take it he’s right after all. 

After that, Hermione drags him to some restaurant in Diagon Alley. The press swarm beyond the windows, people whisper behind their hands, both of them are uncomfortable, but they get through. Each outing after that gets a little easier. 

Luna and Harry take the news best, Neville and Ginny look nervous but accept it, everyone else gossips and casts her strange looks, but don’t dare say anything. Ron, he is the worst though. He fumes and refuses to befriend the ‘little ferret’. Harry though, Harry makes an effort, and she sees them become friends. Daphne and Pansy are now virtually inseparable from her side, having adopted her the moment Draco came clean to his friends. Millicent takes time away from her children once a week for a girls lunch with them, and it turns out Blaise Zambini and Theodore Nott are the two most intelligent men she has ever met, besides herself and Draco.

Somehow, they build a life. 

Her and Draco, together, stone by stone, until they have built a life and he brings out a new type of rock, and slips in around her finger. She punches him lightly to make sure his head is cleared. 

She sits through one more uncomfortable tea with the Malfoy family, and decides that as much as she hates Lucius and Bellatrix, Narcissa is perhaps the bravest person she has ever met. Narcissa even gives her the family jewels to wear on her wedding day. They look good with the dress Hermione found in London. She refused anything remotely wizarding, and Daphne spent hours with her and Ginny until they found the perfect dress, the perfect statement. She is Hermione Granger, and she does not fear them. 

The day is a blur, but she remembers it in perfect clarity after. The way Draco looked at her as she walked down the aisle toward him, with Blaise and Theo and Harry at his side. The smile Hermione gave Ginny as she handed off her bouquet. She remembers laughing her way through the toasts and the cake cutting, smearing several different shades of frosting on Draco, and dancing well into the night. 

To her, it’s the next few years that pass in a blur. Her children are born, they begin to grow up, they go to primary school. They still live in the London flat she bought after the war, and even though her children know of magic- and will one day learn to use it- they have more respect for the muggle world than any other Malfoy ever has before. Except, perhaps, her Draco. 

She teaches them the history of the war, and what it means to the world, but her and Draco never tell them of their involvement. 

Soon her children will go off to Hogwarts, and come back knowing who she is and who they are, and who their father was. But, as Hermione stands and watches her twins depart together for their first year at Hogwarts, she doesn't think about that. About the hurt they will feel at being kept in the dark. Instead, she thinks about how Scorpius and Cassiopeia Malfoy are the two greatest lights in her life, and they burn only a little brighter than Draco. 

And she wouldn’t trade them, or their love, or their happiness, for anything short of the whole universe a thousand times over.


End file.
